Day 30: All Day and Night on the Train From Irkutsk to Novosibirsk

Sunday, October 16, 2016

This is the last day I spent without a Russian SIM card in my phone. I even learned from an Austrian guy I met in the Ulan Ude hostel, the first day I arrived in Russia, how cheap they are. $5 for a month of data, and it gives you a phone number to receive security codes by text, and the ability to call your hostel in advance to tell them you'll be arriving in the wee hours. I tried to borrow someone else's phone to call ahead, but no one understood me.

As usual, I misunderstood a few details of my train ticket, like my arrival time. One confusing thing is that Russian train schedules (but not their flights, I've been told) are all in Moscow time. So if you're in Siberia, it's Moscow time plus 5 hours. Other places are Moscow time plus 4, Moscow time plus 3, etc. It's as if, in the U.S. all train tickets were bought on Washington DC time, which is three hours ahead of California. So if your train ticket in LA says your train is leaving at noon, it really will leave at 9:00 a.m. LA time.

Then throw on top of that that I understand almost nothing in Russian, and I can hardly read the cyrillic alphabet. Like they say, "It's all Russian to me." And unfortunately, a lot of Russians get very impatient and even rude if you don't speak Russian. I look Russians to them, so I'm constantly having people ask me questions I can't even understand. They get really annoyed.

So don't ask me how, but I thought I'd be arriving at a reasonable hour in Novosibirsk, like 7 p.m. But when I checked the schedule posted on the wall of the train, I was surprised to find out that I wouldn't arrive until after midnight. I wasn't afraid to walk around a strange city at night because Russia seems very safe to me. There are police and guards and cameras everywhere, and the people seem decent and honest and uninterested in me or my purse or my camera. But I was afraid of 1. not finding the place or 2. being locked out in the cold all night.

Fortunately, everything worked out. A nice employee at the train station even put on his hat and gloves and walked outside with me to be sure to point me down the right street. Then I got to a big intersection and wasn't sure which way to go, so I went into a fancy hotel and the desk clerk who spoke perfect English was happy to google my hostel and print me up a map. I still hadn't called Zokol Hostel, so I didn't know if they have 24-hour reception or not. But when I got there at 1:00 a.m. I rang the bell, waited a while, and eventually a very nice woman named Kseniya buzzed me in and got me settled on my bunk. Turns out, Zokol is a wonderful hostel, but Kseniya was the only person who spoke English, so I felt a bit alone there. But the bed was warm and comfortable, the wifi was fast, and that's all that mattered that night.

Siberian villages along the way.

Snow-dusted forests in Siberia

One of the stops along the way.

I would have expected it to be greener.

I have no idea, but I'm curious if anyone knows, what this would be that they're shipping.

Looks like possibly salt? It would have been nice if I could have asked someone, but no one on the train spoke any English, and you already know about my lack of Russian.

Something military or some kind of pomp and circumstance is happening outside the train station, but unfortunately, I have no one I can ask anything of.

A closer look at the police and the military. Sometimes it seems like half the Russians are in uniform.

Many, or possibly most, of Russian train stations have an old steam engine on display, this one with a Red Star, which served as a symbol of communism in Russia, beginning in 1917 after the revolution.

I've seen dogs in the funniest outfits in Russia, but failed to get any really good photos of them. They always seem to be in a hurry or embarrassed.

We actually saw a decent amount of snow along the way.

I borrowed my seat mate's magazine, couldn't understand any of the text, but these photos say a lot. The woman is smiling in every photo, so I admire her for that. I don't think I'd be very happy or be able to get myself such a nice-looking boyfriend or husband if I weighed 317 kilos (about 700 pounds).

Finally I asked these students if they speak English. Not really, but they knew how to use Google Translate on their phones. That really convinced me that I would be buying a Russian SIM card in Novosibirsk. At least then I could point to a phrase in Russian and get some information. These girls were traveling with a boy classmate for a school competition. They are all 16 years old and traveling without a chaperone. I don't think American teens would do that. They even gave me a magnet of Irkutsk and told me it's a Russian tradition to give a gift. Well, it's an American tradition to leave a tip at a restaurant, but especially in China and Mongolia, they saw that as an insult. But I was appreciative of my Irkutsk magnet.

A lot of Russian women wear their hair in a long braid like this.

Ha! I figured it out. This city is called Mariinsk.

We had a half hour stop in Mariinsk, which means every smoker jumped off the train and lit up. You can see the men wearing shorts and sandals because the train is so warm. I was happy to find cranberry juice and some cookies at the little kiosk on the left. Then I walked in circles until the train whistle blew. 32 hours on a train is not much exercise.